When preparing for CAT, one has such grandiose dreams and expectations of what life in MBA would be like. One would think that every student in B-school would be some version of a genius, but quite frankly, it takes one group assignment to realize that people here are just as human as you think!
So, with this let go over the few kinds of people you can expect to meet in an assignment group of XUB.
1. The Volunteer, the loveliest person in the group. This is the person who, after maybe 10 minutes of awkward silence, will ‘volunteer’ to do the work. Well…someone always has to put in the elbow grease for the work to finish.
2. The Over Promiser. The variety you should be most cautious of. This person will promise you the skies, stars, moon and heaven. But will never actually get any of those things before the presentation. It’s not that they make the promise with deceit in mind. They actually wish to be able to deliver, it’s just that they never consider the feasibility of what they are promising to bring. And this is exactly why you should be most cautious of them, cause neither you, nor they will be able to understand till a moment too late, that your plan isn’t possible.
3. The Control Freak. I think we all met this person at different stages in our schooling. These people are very ‘concerned’ about how the project is coming along, and even more concerned about if every minute detail of the project is going exactly the way they planned it. You’ll know this person at a glance, cause many times you’ll make the mistake of thinking this person as a leader. But they are not the leader, because they’ll never bother to hear your side of the story.
4. The Leader. This is the person who holds the chaos together. It’s the worst role to play. The person who is responsible for everything that goes wrong and nothing that goes right. This is the person who actually moves the group towards its purpose and is the least happy during the entire process. But this is also the person you’ll want to see again and again in your group, cause more than anything, this person always helps you see the goal through to the end.
5. The last, and the variety that you need to be most vary of, is the Free-rider. This is the person you can rely upon to never get any work done. They’ll say it; Oh, they always say that they will do it. But they will not, under any circumstances, get the work done. They’ll come up with a thousand excuses to not do it and in the end, and you’ll be finishing their work.
That’s about the briefest overview one can give you about thetypes of people you can expect to work with in XUB. But I will say this, despite everything that happens, these will be some of the most memorable groups. Not for all the hurdles and annoyances, but for all the diversity of ideas and beauty that these same people bring.